Local athletic directors and coaches are concerned that high school athletes and fans increasingly use social media to post raw, unfiltered material that is can prove damaging in many ways.

Local athletic directors and coaches are concerned that high school athletes and fans increasingly use social media to post raw, unfiltered material that is can prove damaging in many ways.

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Marty Lisevick, athletic director at Staples High School.

Marty Lisevick, athletic director at Staples High School.

Photo: Contributed Photo

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Staples Boys Soccer Coach Dan Woog during the FCIAC boys soccer quarterfinal match between Staples high School and Greenwich High School at Greenwich, Friday afternoon, Oct. 26, 2012. Greenwich advanced with a 3-0 win.

Staples Boys Soccer Coach Dan Woog during the FCIAC boys soccer quarterfinal match between Staples high School and Greenwich High School at Greenwich, Friday afternoon, Oct. 26, 2012. Greenwich advanced with a

Fairfield Prep athletic director Steve Donahue was at Alumni Field, preparing to host a boys soccer match one evening in 2011. The Jesuits football team was on the road that night, and he wanted to track down the score. So Donahue opened a Twitter app on his smartphone, typed "Fairfield Prep" into a search and was floored by what popped up.

"I'm drunk here leading the Bomb Squad," a Prep student had tweeted from the game, referring to the student-cheering section.

In Westport, fans of Staples High's boys soccer team once swapped vulgar and homophobic comments with players and fans on another team via social media, Wreckers' coach Dan Woog recalls.

"It was bad. The principal of the other school threatened to have his team forfeit," Woog said.

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A Fairfield athlete last fall tweeted, "My volleyball team is (expletive) amazing and yours suck!"

These are not isolated incidents of teen impulsiveness.

Athletic directors and coaches are concerned that athletes and fans increasingly are using social media to post raw, unfiltered material that is damaging on multiple levels.

A four-month review of social-media use by area high school athletes and fans conducted by the Westport News and the Fairfield Citizen showed:

Vulgarity-laced posts that disparage opponents are common.

References to alcohol and drunkenness are frequent.

Some athletes post photos of themselves with beer or liquor, with what appear to be drugs -- even firearms.

Some cheerleaders, long held as the epitome of good sportsmanship, engage in profane cyber-taunting, too.

Coaches and administrators say use of social media at its worst displays the poorest of sportsmanship, attacks innocent individuals personally and damages the reputations of schools and communities.

And the consequences for athletes who post inappropriate material can be severe: some have been suspended from competition; scholarship offers have been withdrawn. Officials warn that college admissions, even future employment could be compromised.

But the vastness of the Internet -- coupled with teens' ability to create anonymous profiles -- have made sites such as Twitter increasingly difficult to police.

"As coaches and ADs, it's gotten to the point where it's uncontrollable," said Matt Narwold, girls volleyball coach at Fairfield Warde and winter site director at Fairfield Ludlowe.

DIGITAL BULLETIN BOARDS

On March 5 -- four days before the state cheerleading championships -- Staples' athletic director Marty Lisevick attended a meeting of his FCIAC counterparts. Before the scheduled discussion, two ADs were sharing copies of Twitter posts made by two cheerleaders from opposing schools.

The cheerleaders, Lisevick says, "were just going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The language is atrocious. And they're just basically trying to taunt each other's team."

The cheerleaders subsequently were suspended from the competition, he said.

Before social media, trash-talking between high school athletes was mostly limited to the field, and it ended there. On the rare occasion that a disparaging remark found its way into the newspaper, the story quickly was pinned to a locker room bulletin board where it was used as motivation.

Social media sites provide today's athletes with a digital version of that bulletin board. Whether the trash talk is between athletes or fan bases, it is instantaneous. It can mount before games and persist long after. And some ADs and coaches believe it can be disruptive to teams.

"We've had incidents where kids put something out on a Twitter account, or a Facebook account, and they claim they're trying to promote the game," Lisevick said. "But what they're saying is completely inappropriate, whether it's taunting the other team, naming specific kids on the other team."

Facebook became a battleground before the Prep boys soccer team's state semifinal match with Pomperaug in Nov. 2011. One of the Jesuits' players posted a status calling top-seeded Pomperaug "done" and "overrated." Incited by the remarks, Pomperaug's student section fired back during the match, chanting "overrated" after their team scored the game's lone goal.

"We hold the kids accountable, whether it's social media or speaking to a newspaper, or whatever it is, you're responsible for your words," Prep's Donahue said. "If they are derogatory, you will be held accountable."

ADs and coaches know that nothing positive ever comes from engaging in taunts fueled over social media.

"It can just rile up your home fan base," Lisevick said. "Now, what should be a good game, now you've got to calm down kids that are all jacked up about something that's ridiculous."

MORE THAN JUST GAMES

Narwold and others say inappropriate behavior on social media can be damaging. Not only do athletes represent themselves with the content they distribute, Narwold says, but they also represent "their high school, their town and their fellow students."

"Trash talking that's gone back and forth has reached inappropriate proportions," he said.

At Staples, Lisevick said, the tolerance for any content of poor taste is low.

"As the AD, you want to put your kids (on the field), see them compete, see them in a good light," he said. "You want to see them exhibit sportsmanship."

For athletes, the consequences of particular posts can be far-reaching and extend beyond high school.

Yuri Wright, a Don Bosco Prep (N.J.) football player, was being recruited by powerhouse programs -- Michigan and Notre Dame, among others. But in January 2012, Don Bosco expelled him for a series of sexually-graphic and racist tweets he made the previous summer. In turn, Michigan pulled its scholarship offer. Wright eventually ended up at a less-prominent program, Colorado.

Just last week, David Williams, a high school football coach in Peoria, Ill., tweeted, "Just got off phone with a D1 Assistant coach who told me he would no longer b recruiting a kid due 2 the content of his tweets."

Though athletes can lock their Facebook or Twitter profiles, it's not a barrier from public view.

"Companies will look for some things and search students online," said Christina Tsimortos, assistant director of undergraduate admissions at Sacred Heart University. "I don't seek out that information [but] I do care how a student chooses to present him or herself. If a [profile] picture and posts are not tasteful, that is something we'd consider."

Yet, some students still post vulgar, offensive statuses -- some that include photos depicting illegal behaviors, such as underage drinking or drug use -- on social media sites.

"A lot of the times, they're under the influence at the time," said John Meyers, a captain on Fairfield Prep's football team. "They're not thinking straight. I think it's something that they think is cool.

"A lot of times it's ignorance. [They think] People won't care, people won't see it."

Lisevick said it's natural for high school kids to test the limits.

"Whether it's in your family life or it's in school, they're looking to test and they're looking to see where the boundaries are," he said.

A VOICE

Shortly after learning that Dawon Dicks was forced to resign as head coach of Notre Dame-Fairfield's football team, some of the school's students turned to Twitter on March 5. Using the hashtag #WeWantCoachD, they lobbied for his return.

One of the tweets read: "There is no ND without Coach D." Another read: "ND just made the biggest mistake of letting go the one man who believed in all of our sports."

For all of the troubles that social media can cause, sites such as Twitter and Facebook have offered students something that was unavailable to them a decade ago: A digital voice in larger public debate.

"Twitter seemed to be the best medium to voice our displeasure," said Matt Tolster, a member of the Lancers' boys hockey team. "It just seems that Twitter is a site that most students use regularly and is better to spread an idea, petition, such as this."

Many school administrations, including ND, use Facebook and Twitter to send out valuable information to students and parents.

"There are a ton of positives behind (social media)," ND athletic director Rob Bleggi said. "We post our midterm-exam schedules and all those other little things that I get to a lot of families very quickly, as opposed to newsletters.

"For us, as a small private high school, it brings the community closer together."

Teams also have their own Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, through which they post rosters, game schedules and stories written by the media.

"I think it's great in terms of getting kids to games, in getting the word out about big upcoming games, and that sort of creating a buzz," Woog, the Staples soccer coach said. "I think live-tweeting a game is fantastic for the people who can't be there."

`A MOVING TARGET'

Lisevick said Staples coaches each year have the option of taking a two- to three-hour class on the do's and don't's of social media. Encouraged, but not required for coaches, the class includes an instruction packet, "Module 16: Appropriate Use of Electronic Media by Coaches," as part of the Connecticut Coaching Education Program.

Believing that education is a vital step in combating inappropriate behavior on social media, Lisevick also encourages his coaches to remind their players about the dangers. He said it's one of the "best ways to contain the issue."

"We talk to them," said Woog, who takes the CIAC's course. "We also say, `If you're getting involved in all that stuff, if you're constantly tweeting or updating Facebook, then you're not doing something else. You're not training, you're not doing homework, you're not eating well, you're not getting dressed, you're not concentrating on what you need to do to win the game."

Local ADs and coaches are not allowed to interact with students through social-media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, so inappropriate content sometimes goes unnoticed. However, many say they would act if troubling content was brought to their attention.

"I don't want to turn a blind eye. That won't help my athletes," Narwold said. "How involved do you get without invading their personal privacy? I'm not going to friend on Facebook, it's not appropriate."

Lisevick said the problem is significant enough that at some point, he believes the FCIAC could enforce a policy for student athletes on what's appropriate content for social media.

"We've got to put an end to this stuff with the insults, with the taunting -- the blogging that you just go off and bash the other team, or a particular player, and you're hiding behind an alias," he said.

Woog believes his players have followed the guidelines in regards to social media but added that technology can be difficult to contain.

"You're finished on talking about what's on Twitter and Facebook, and all of a sudden there's photos on Instagram that they haven't covered," he said. "Technology is a moving target."